highlights over existing color and damaged hair..

i've dyed my hair with drugstore permanent hairdye for about 4 years (l'oreal feria starry night/blueish black) about every three months. every time i dye (and i've only realized this recently,) my hair becomes slightly more porous and damaged, therefore does not hold the hair dye as well, and lately when i dye black, it fades out significantly within a month.

about a month ago it was getting lighter so i dyed it with feria chocolate cherry, a reddish black, and it looks like it covered the black but is still lighter at the top.

i want to get blond chunky highlights ala kelly clarkson, so i asked one salon about it today. the woman said she doesn't use bleach or foils to do highlights. (how can she not use bleach???) she also said that because i used "box" dye, the highlights might not come out evenly in color.

i'm also worried about the porosity and damage level of my hair. is there a deep conditioner or some sort of restoration treatment that would make it slightly healthier for me to go about highlights? i've already decided to wait until some of my current color fades out before i do these highlights.

e-Katherine is right, you shouldn't be applying dye repeatedly to the same hair. Touch-ups are for roots only. Depending on the colour, you may sometimes want to pull the colour through to the ends for five minutes at the end of processing or do a shampoo cap, but full processing is for roots only.

Once your hair is damaged, there is nothing you can do to repair it. You can condition it and put smoothing treatments on it to make it look better, but it won't get any healthier. Don't buy into manufacturers' claims about protein restructurizers or vitamins that repair damage. Hair is dead. Once it's damaged. It's damaged. That's it.

As for the stylist who said she doesn't use bleach, she probably does highlights with high-lift products. These are dyes with a high ratio and volume of peroxide which lighten your hair colour up to 4 levels. They won't work well on dyed hair because colour doesn't lift colour. The only way to get decent highlights on dyed hair is with bleach.

I think your best bet is to just leave your hair alone and let the damaged parts grow until they're all trimmed off. If you go ahead with bleaching highlights on already damaged hair you could end up with major breakage, followed by the necessity for a pixie cut.

High-lifts are less damaging than bleach, but they don't work well for everyone. They're best for people whose hair is level 6 or lighter. Some people just end up with orange hair if they use a high-lift. I've known people who've really damaged their hair because they didn't get light enough on the first application so they use a high-lift again and again, expecting it to lighten further. It doesn't work that way; it won't get any lighter it will just get more damaged. Everyone's hair is different, though. My hair is level 3, but I can get to level 8 with a high-lift, then I do bleach highlights on top of that. It looks a bit brassy at first so I tone it and use a purple shampoo. If you can go blonde with a high-lift it's great, but a lot of people need to bleach. One or two applications of bleach done properly is less damaging than numerous applications of high-lift, but if you're comparing them 1 to 1, high-lifts are more gentle.

Here's a link. This will give you an idea of what levels are. Just scroll down to "Levels of Hair Colour". It can get a bit confusing sometimes. Not every hair colour manufacturer has the same level system. Clairol (http://www.clairol.com) & L'Oreal (http://www.lorealparis.com) start to differ in the mid-range. When you're choosing a hair colour, you should follow the level system of the manufacturer whose product you're using.